Auction Reports

Topping a number of good pre-Christmas clock sales was a rare table/bracket clock, among the last made by London ‘Golden Age’ name Daniel Quare (1649-1724) with Stephen Horseman, who became his partner at the Exchange Alley workshop in 1721.

Christmas has little, if any, effect on collectors of vintage and antique toys, but that doesn’t stop auctioneers mounting festive season specials.

The drive by, among others, the Royal Academy and the National Gallery to promote women’s importance in art would have required little effort had campaigners looked at the world of modern ceramics.

Serendipity had it that three early pieces of European pottery and glass – two of them dated – were offered for sale across a trio of English regional auctions in a matter of days in December.

While five-figure sums for top-end 20th century design furniture are familiar in the international centres of New York, Paris and London, fewer pieces appear in the UK regional market.

A fine example of a dirk, without which no Highland formal dresswear is complete, was among the stand-out lots at Cuttlestones’ (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale at Penkridge on November 22.

Three-day auction at Cumbrian saleroom demonstrates global reach of art and antiques.

One of the more unusual corkscrews to come onto what is a fiercely competitive collectors’ market recently was a brass, steel and wooden contraption of the type one may have seen clamped to the bar of fin-de-siècle brasseries.

Never out of fashion, the best furniture by Robert Thompson is going through one of its periodic surges – as evident at Wilkinson’s Doncaster rooms last month (ATG No 2369) and at Sworders of Stansted Mountfichet (ATG No 2363) in October.

While the market shows increasingly discerning tastes, quality definitely counts at auction.

High-priced luxury handbags and other luxury goods made the most money at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) sale of Costume, Accessories and Textiles at Leyburn but collectors’ interest was more focused on a private collection of hat pins.

The bronze pieces produced by Rene Lalique are perhaps less well-known than the master’s jewellery and glass but seldom so under-rated that they are consigned to the dustbin, as was the case with this c.1910 hand mirror, below.

The two sewing boxes modelled as houses shown below were made for different markets but both had strong appeal to UK collectors.

On the market for the first time in at least 60 years, and in some cases for more than a century, a small collection of 17th and 18th century silver accounted for a fraction of the lots but 20% of the total at the two-day winter sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries (24% buyer’s premium).

Eclipsed in price by a £150,000 pearl (News, ATG No 2369), the c.1810 Swiss gold automaton pocket watch shown below was at least as eye-catching at the Roseberys (25% buyer’s premium) jewellery and watches auction on November 20.

Very much a buyer’s market these days, English ceramics in their various forms are affordable to collectors on modest budgets.

Believed to have been in the same family since new, a rare 19th century Jules Steiner doll and her trunk of clothes demolished the estimate at a wide-ranging sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) at Crewkerne on November 16.

A toy engine offered at North Yorkshire saleroom Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) sold for what is thought to be a new world record for a Hornby Dublo locomotive.

This very rare bear shown below made a very high price for such a small fellow – just 14cm (5½in) high.

It is 40 years since 19th century potlids were the collectables of choice but there is still a very active market for them.